al-Mutawakkil ala Allah Muhammad ibn al-Mu'tadid

Al-Mutawakkil ala Allah Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn al-Mu'tadid, the sixth caliph of Cairo, who ruled between 763 and 808 AH. Al-Suyuti calls him the father of the caliphs of his age. ¹

He was given the caliphate by an appointment from his father al-Mu'tadid in Jumada 763 AH, and his days lasted forty-five years, with deposition and imprisonment in between. ¹

Atabeg Aynbak al-Badri deposed him for fifteen days in 779 AH and set up Zakariya al-Musta'sim, then he returned. Barquq deposed him in 785 AH and imprisoned him in the citadel of the mountain, then regretted it, brought him out and restored him. He refused when the amirs wanted to make him sultan when they turned against al-Ashraf Sha'ban. ¹

Al-Suyuti says that about a hundred children were born to him, living and stillborn, and that five of them became caliphs: al-Musta'in al-Abbas, al-Mu'tadid Dawud, al-Mustakfi Sulayman, al-Qa'im Hamza, and al-Mustanjid Yusuf. He says that all the Abbasids alive in his age were of his offspring. ¹

He died on the night of Tuesday, the twenty-eighth of Rajab 808 AH. ¹

Al-Mas'udi attributes to al-Mutawakkil (the Abbasid) that he departed from the doctrines of al-Ma'mun, al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq, forbade disputation, ordered imitation, and made the transmission of hadith public. ²

The page also has a report of his craving for a cooking-pot in which a dish of sikbaj would be cooked. ³

The two reports of al-Mas'udi most probably concern the Abbasid al-Mutawakkil (d. 247 AH), not the caliph of Cairo. This needs an additional source.